Fine-tuning due for conflict of interest, commitment policy

STANFORD -- Responding to new feedback, Professor Craig Heller and his
Committee on Research will fine-tune their proposed policy on faculty
conflict of interest and commitment.

Heller said Monday, Feb. 7, that the committee may tighten up language on
intellectual property rights and loosen provisions relating to students who
work for faculty outside the university.

The draft policy would require faculty to have a significant presence on
campus and disclose their outside consulting activities. It also would vest
the university with ownership of all technologies created or invented by
faculty using university resources.

The committee collected feedback on its latest draft during an open
meeting Monday afternoon. Only a handful of faculty were among the audience
of 16 in Tresidder's large Oak West Lounge.

"I really thought there would be a lot more reaction," Heller said.

"I know there are a lot of people reacting behind the scenes, but I don't
know when it's going to come out."

He speculated that he might collect more input when the draft is taken up
by the Faculty Senate on March 3.

Heller told the open meeting audience the policy is "primarily
educational." It sets forth principles and procedures but is not a legal
guide, he said.

The most important reason for eventually adopting the proposed policy,
Heller said, is that the university must be able to prove to outsiders "that
our motives and our ethics are all in order."

"There aren't major problems" in conflict of interest and commitment at
Stanford, he said. "But we want to be absolutely sure that we warrant the
status of being an institution of public trust."

Much of Monday's discussion focused on how to vest ownership of software
and other intellectual property.

The current draft stipulates that all technologies with commercial
potential created or discovered by faculty using university resources must be
disclosed to the university, which will claim ownership. Computer software
for teaching purposes or dissemination of scholarly work would be excluded
from the disclosure requirement - along with books, articles, artistic works
and other forms of educational media - and the university would not claim
ownership.

Software presents a challenge, Heller told the audience.

The Committee on Research has looked on software as similar to an
invention that runs a machine, Heller told the audience.

However, the Committee on Academic Computing and Information Systems puts
software in the same category as books, articles and scholarly works, a
position the Faculty Senate adopted last year. This would exempt software
from university ownership.

Elliott Levinthal, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, told the
committee he would draw the line as close to tradition as possible.

"Before computers, we wrote books. Now we have the possibility of
distributing them on CD-ROM," he said.

All software that is not simply dissemination in digital form of something
that could be printed should be covered by the policy on inventions, he said,
including interactive teaching programs and operating systems.

Heller said after the meeting that the committee tried to draw the line at
commercial vs. educational intent of the software, but that is a difficult
criterion. Some will say an introductory textbook - whether printed or on
disk - was done for economic gain and others will argue instructional
motives, he said. Either way, it is an argument "you can't win."

In other discussions, James Collman, chemistry, criticized provisions of
the proposed policy relating to invention disclosure as overly broad and
vague, and possibly subject to abuse by the administration. He said that when
faculty members develop inventions while consulting for outside companies,
the invention would be owned by the company and could not be disclosed to
Stanford because of confidentiality limitations.

Heller said the committee had not anticipated problems with
confidentiality agreements, and would take that under consideration.

Steve Gorelick, geological and environmental sciences, criticized the
draft policy for not stating clearly the limits of disclosure. When
consulting for environmental firms, "they don't want you to disclose that you
are working for them," he said.

Committee member Ross Shachter, engineering-economic systems, said the
current policy does not require disclosure unless there is some other
entanglement with the university.

Warren Hausman, industrial engineering, told the committee that the
statement about maintaining a significant presence on campus might be
inconsistent with the modern electronic age, when students can communicate
with faculty through electronic mail.

He also criticized the policy for prohibiting faculty from hiring students
for after-hours work that might be helpful to the student in his or her
academic work.

Committee member Steve Boxer, chemistry, said the committee focused on
faculty members with financial interest in companies hiring students to work
outside the university. That is prohibited, although exceptions can be made,
he said.

Committee members agreed that the wording might be liberalized in cases
where the student would work for a faculty member in an outside company in
which the professor has no financial interest.

Heller said after the meeting that "we bent over backward" to protect
students from undue faculty control. That language could be loosened, he
said.

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